Maybe if I just leave this here it will go out of my head and I can actually go back to my studies...tonight, I feel very irked.
This isn't anyone's fault, but it's super-aggravating nonetheless.
So, I'm working on the second draft of my first paper in College Writing II now. This week, I was supposed to do peer review of two other students' papers, and they would return the favor on mine. We were grouped up at random by the professor on Tuesday to give copies of first drafts to our respective teammates.
It went downhill quickly from there for me.
As luck would have it, I was the only one in my trio who actually had copies of the first draft on hand. One peer had simply forgotten hers and promised to e-mail it to me when she got home, which she did. I have no clue what happened with the other guy in my group...not only did he not have a draft, he also didn't take my e-mail address, saying he'd figure it out. Nice attitude he has. (insert sarcasm here)
So I ended up with only one draft to peer review. I did my best to be helpful on it, critical thinking not being a strong point of mine, hoping that at least I could discuss one fellow student's work yesterday. It would be better than none, after all.
I show up Thursday with my one completed peer review, thinking I would have to take penalty for not having a pair of them and was stewing about it. As it turned out, I feel like I wasted my time doing one peer review, because neither of my group mates showed up. That's just great, how am I supposed to get feedback? How can I give them feedback?
But by then, that was a moot point. The guy had to have blown the whole thing off. And I never found out what happened with the girl, because when I e-mailed her asking if she wanted feedback anyway, there was no response (as of 9:30 pm tonight, just before I started typing this).
Now, in the professor's defense, he was as fair as he could have been. I couldn't be penalized because my teammates didn't show, and I only had one bonus copy on hand for the Thursday class because I did not anticipate this coming, Fortunately a different student, who had to miss Tuesday because of an emergency, and who hadn't been paired off because of that, came in this time...with extra draft copies.
So the professor paired us off in a team of two, but since we hadn't read each other's drafts, we were given permission to redo the peer review assignment to the best of our abilities on each other's drafts, which ended up taking up the entire class session. We couldn't discuss what we found much because of the situation, so we left hints for each other in the margins.
It was all really aggravating, but one good thing did come of it. At the end, we were invited to score our teammates' work on a 100 point scale, using the same rubric that will be used to score the final drafts.
I gave my teammate 80 points -- a good first draft score -- noting that her argument needed a little tightening up and a couple of connections between paragraphs felt needed. She gave me 73 points, which I felt was right around what I deserved because my first draft amounted to freewriting. Her biggest clue was that I needed more quotes from the readings the paper is based on.
It just felt like a lot of aggravation for no good reason. Hopefully, when paper #2 comes along (only the professor will feedback the second draft, and then I get one more shot), things will go smoother than this.
This isn't anyone's fault, but it's super-aggravating nonetheless.
So, I'm working on the second draft of my first paper in College Writing II now. This week, I was supposed to do peer review of two other students' papers, and they would return the favor on mine. We were grouped up at random by the professor on Tuesday to give copies of first drafts to our respective teammates.
It went downhill quickly from there for me.
As luck would have it, I was the only one in my trio who actually had copies of the first draft on hand. One peer had simply forgotten hers and promised to e-mail it to me when she got home, which she did. I have no clue what happened with the other guy in my group...not only did he not have a draft, he also didn't take my e-mail address, saying he'd figure it out. Nice attitude he has. (insert sarcasm here)
So I ended up with only one draft to peer review. I did my best to be helpful on it, critical thinking not being a strong point of mine, hoping that at least I could discuss one fellow student's work yesterday. It would be better than none, after all.
I show up Thursday with my one completed peer review, thinking I would have to take penalty for not having a pair of them and was stewing about it. As it turned out, I feel like I wasted my time doing one peer review, because neither of my group mates showed up. That's just great, how am I supposed to get feedback? How can I give them feedback?
But by then, that was a moot point. The guy had to have blown the whole thing off. And I never found out what happened with the girl, because when I e-mailed her asking if she wanted feedback anyway, there was no response (as of 9:30 pm tonight, just before I started typing this).
Now, in the professor's defense, he was as fair as he could have been. I couldn't be penalized because my teammates didn't show, and I only had one bonus copy on hand for the Thursday class because I did not anticipate this coming, Fortunately a different student, who had to miss Tuesday because of an emergency, and who hadn't been paired off because of that, came in this time...with extra draft copies.
So the professor paired us off in a team of two, but since we hadn't read each other's drafts, we were given permission to redo the peer review assignment to the best of our abilities on each other's drafts, which ended up taking up the entire class session. We couldn't discuss what we found much because of the situation, so we left hints for each other in the margins.
It was all really aggravating, but one good thing did come of it. At the end, we were invited to score our teammates' work on a 100 point scale, using the same rubric that will be used to score the final drafts.
I gave my teammate 80 points -- a good first draft score -- noting that her argument needed a little tightening up and a couple of connections between paragraphs felt needed. She gave me 73 points, which I felt was right around what I deserved because my first draft amounted to freewriting. Her biggest clue was that I needed more quotes from the readings the paper is based on.
It just felt like a lot of aggravation for no good reason. Hopefully, when paper #2 comes along (only the professor will feedback the second draft, and then I get one more shot), things will go smoother than this.
Replies
Hey :) sorry that it took me so long to get to reading this...sincerely hoping that you were able to \"shake it off\" and that the days since have been better for you. It always sucks when our success depends on others, that\'s one reason why I tended to prefer online classes; nobody could screw it up but me! LOL...but it sounds like the professor was understanding, so that\'s always good. Hope your day is awesomeness :)